In the long term it will help the Democrat party. By ejecting those leftmost elements the party might be able to move back towards the center.

My parents were lifelong Democrats, however, the Democrat party is nothing like what it was years ago. Much more moderate, working class valued, not high centered on abortion, birth control. The Democrats of the Kennedy era would be far to the right of the current Dem party.

If they learn a lesson and become more central, it would help in the future.

The modern democrat party, led by Obama, Pelosi and Reid, is off the rails left. It has become the party of anti-business, anti-free market, anti -individualism, punitive taxation, cronyism, and corruption. The democrats cannot deliver transparency and have forgotten that we are a nation of laws.The democrat party isn't just the party of big government; it's the party of waste and fraud.It's time that moderates re-take the democrat party.John Hickenlooper is one of them.He actually understands business.

I sure hope he isn’t stupid enough to hitch a ride on this sinking ship.Save yourselves, democrats.

Also, you especially haven't seen California, which is what happens when Democrats don't lose elections.

My dad is a very highly credentialed, award winning tenured teacher of emotionally disturbed, and otherwise very deficient students, who taught them to read, then Shakespeare, getting them excited about school.

He was let go along with most every other tenured teacher over 60. Illegally, of course, but the school districts are so desperate for money they do whatever they have to, and that means laying off the best teachers to hire the absolute least experienced.

My brother was a teacher. Taught history. Also let go.

I'm finishing up a PhD. My wife and I just had a baby, we were going to use my student insurance, because my adjuncting doesn't come with benefits. Insurance costs went up $500 a quarter due to obamacare.

My family can't afford Democrats to keep winning. California hasn't been able to afford it for a long time. But, since they stay in power we get a high speed train going from nowhere to nowhere and this Fall we will vote on whether to label if food has been genetically modified.

No jobs, no help, teachers laid off, school districts desperate, the state falling apart, businesses leaving. If you're rich like Nancy Pelosi, it doesn't matter.

If you're rich like Reid, it doesn't matter.

If you're rich like the Obamas are getting, and going to get through this office, it doesn't matter.

AP, an audit is Scientology talk. It is a procedure where you are hooked up to a sort of lie detector and are read a long list of statements or questions to see which ones you react to. Supposedly the ones you react to in a certain way are things you need to 'clear' from your life. The church charges beaucoup bucks for this.

If they lose, and can correctly identify the reasons for losing, then it will help them. But they appear to be somewhat delusional. I am not confident they can correctly identify the reasons for a loss.

If you look at how the Democrats reacted after the mid-terms, I don't think losing will change anything. They didnt learn anything by it. In fact, the President insists that he didn't do a good enough job telling a story rather than making an adjustment to his and his party's policies. Personally, I hope that they all believe that.

"Why in the world is loosing a good thing? Ask the GOP what it feels like to lose after this election."

A lot of us think it's much better for the GOP that Obama won in 08. That's the part of Althouse's justifications for her vote that I agree with. It may have been worse for the country, but the party needed to get back to small government as it's central value. Obama made a bright line on the issue, and forced the GOP to the other side of it.

I think nothing will help either Party, or will enable us to get along better, until we have successfully discarded the principles that a corporation = a person-w/-a-human-body and that money = speech. jmo.

There are two ways to answer this question. As a good friend of mine pointed out, whoever is in the White House has a huge mess on his hands.

What would Obama do? Try to kick the can down the road as far as he can, and hope for change in the economy. Never realizing that his own policies, and the policies of the left got us here. What does four more years of Obama's economy look like? In 2011, the interest on the debt was $454B. That's 1/4th of all receipts. What if people no longer want to give the US low interest rates? What if they spike up to 5, 6, or 7%? Eventually the cost of borrowing has to go up.

Internationally, the Middle East seems in worse shape than it was when Bush left it. We are going to lose Afghanistan, which is unfortunate for the women over there, but why are we fighting the Taliban? Osama is gone. Imagine the Arab Spring spreading to Saudi Arabia, or Iran stirring up real mischief.

However, Obama in another term will allow him to appoint more "Wise Latinas" to the bench, and push the country even further down the road of socialization. Oh, I know, it's really puppet master socialization, in which the government forces businesses to operate within a very confined set of rules. So these are good things for the Democrat Party, even though they are bad things for the country.

Who knows, the guy might push Cap and Trade, and spend a few more trillion dollars on renewables, and drive up our manufacturing costs.

Now, imagine Romney gets in there. He might actually try to do something to fix the problems. That's going to hurt a lot of people. Because that extra $1T a year the government is pushing into the economy every year over what Bush did is a stimulus. People spend that money. That source will dry up, and so will the market for the goods those people purchase. Getting out of the hole, once in it, is painful. It's the difference between walking up the hill, and walking down the hill.

So yes, if Romney foolishly tries to fix the mess, it will hurt, and that might make the Democrats more popular.

Unfortunately, getting to energy independence is going to take a bit longer than one might think, and perhaps the fruit of that labor will start popping just as people become tired of Romney. So yeah, Romney becomes a single term and Hillary gets benefits.

If Obama wins, he has to own it, but the damage may be more than eight years, but more like twenty, or thirty years, for technology to pop up and fight back.

In other words, too hard to say, too many variables.

It's not even clear to me Romney would be better for the country in the long run. I think the policies of Romney are better than Obamas by a long shot, but right now the real issue is the attitude of the people. That must change.

In order for his loss to help them Democrats would need to be able to distance themselves. But Obama is a conventional leftist. The only way it helps is if the economy suffers another shock that can credibly be pinned on Romney.

Yes, it will, because while Obama is in office the Democratic party will be stopped from discussing the real issues.

It's sad, but Obama has succumbed to the DC bubble like he was born and raised inside it. He literally has no clue as to what is happening outside it. As long as he is the president, he will go on defending a mythical status quo, and the Democratic party will be entrapped into defending it with him.

The Democrats can be quite strong in opposition, and maybe there they can regain their voice over policy.

Here's the deal. To help the Democrat Party, not only must Obama lose but the Democrats must lose the Senate by a large margin as well. And then the Democrat Party must purge the progressives, Lib-terds, leftists and liberals from the party.

At which point there will become only 2 viable parties in the USA, the Republican Party, which must purge the Republican establishment and the Libertarians.

Why in the world is loosing a good thing? Ask the GOP what it feels like to lose after this election.

i guess you forgot that the most recent federal election was 2010, when the dems got their asses handed to them. I guess you've also forgotten about the special election in Wisconsin where after a year and a half of leftist agitation, Scott Walker won.

Don't worry Lindsey. After the beating the dems will take this November you can still console yourself with all the casual sex you want. Whatever you do though don't try to do anything serious or meaningful. Continue your empty existence and whine that other should be forced to pay for it.

It is how they know to adjust their positions to align more closely with voters'.

Clinton learned from '94, but Obama hasn't from '10. Their prez nominees since Clinton have tacked to his left. It's not apparent Congressional Dems learned anything from their 2010 losses when they retained Nancy Pelosi as their Minority Leader.

I just voted yes. The hope is that by hitting bottom, the Left and the Democratic Party could finally engage in the self critique and reevaluation that is long overdue.

But what if it takes two Obama administrations to confirm its failure? Then the Left and the Democratic Party woud lie in its morass, anchored in an essentially 60's mentality as we drift further into the 21st century.

All indicies of success will be ignored because the Left and my Democratic Party can carry on even if it is hollowed out. It might even employ a lack of content as a new definition of success: surface reflectivity is so postmodern after all.

No it wouldn't. Because the economy will likely improve before Romney does anything and Romney would take false credit for it.

I'm kind of curious, how long do you think it will take Romney to "do anything" if he's elected? I can see the logic of saying that our economic problems are so big that nothing the president does in the short run is going to fix things, but that doesn't seem to be what you're saying. For what you said to be true, the economy would have to show actual improvement before the middle of next year. Is there any credible data that predicts that happening?

The answer hinges on whether the Democrats reject socialism and economic fantasies, see the virtue of a limited federal government and federalism, and embrace the need for robust foreign and defense policies predicated on American interests.

But were they to do that, they'd be Republicans.

So while defeating Obama is the necessary step for improving the Democrat Party, it is hardly sufficient.

"You mean like passing a law requiring people to buy health insurance and then empowering a panel of unelected bureaucrats to dictate what medical procedures doctors will be paid for?"

Intruding into peoples' private lives to compel econom...er, tax (forgot my John Roberts there for a moment) economic activities really isn't intruding into peoples' private lives, according to all good Democrats; not endorsing same sex marriage or not paying for sex-change operations or not endorsing abortion on demand is.

Interesting thought experiments on display here. So let's explore the other side of the coin. Will it help the GOP overall if (when?) Romney loses? And if that happens, what lessons should Republicans take from that? I'm seeing lots of opining here, so I'm sure there will be some good responses to these questions.

On what time scale? Probably Obama's reelection would help the Democrats ... for about 3-6 months between Election Night and the opening months of Obama's second term. Then Obama would continue his Negative Midas Touch straight into 2016.

By Nov. 2016, the idea of voting for any Dem for any office would probably seem like gobbling down cyanide to most voters, if they're even still on board with the idea of the U.S. remaining a single country (they might not be, given another four years of Obama's rule-or-ruin tactics).

So it all depends on what time scale you're thinking about the question. Beating Romney/Ryan would feel great for a short while. So would another shot of heroin. Neither's good for years, though.

So I guess I'm being asked whether I agree with the proposition that Obama's loss to a more lie-based, more socially dysfunctional/disinterested administration would be a good thing for his party, or by extension, for the American people.

No. I disagree.

If you believe in government of the bribed, by the bribed and for the bribed, then just come right out and say so.

But I am allowed to think that this is a fundamentally bad thing. And an immoral thing.

The fact that it has become the norm in the American political system, particularly on the right, is to America's shame. The fact that you are impervious to how discrediting and embarrassing that is says something.

"What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union."

Answer: If the GOP does not win this one, the American people will lose. Big time.

"Mitt Romney had been hinting, in an oblique, undeveloped way, at this line of argument as he moved tentatively toward finding a real message. Then he took the startling step of appointing Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, and the earth moved. If Romney was the embodiment of the spirit of a free market, Ryan was its prophet. His speech at the convention was so dangerous to the Obama Democrats, with their aspirations toward European-style democratic socialism, that they unleashed their “fact checkers” to find mistakes (“lies”) in it. (Remember the old Yes Minister joke: “You can always accuse them of errors of detail, sir. There are always some errors of detail”.) When Romney and Ryan offer their arguments to the American people, they are, of course, at an advantage over almost any British or European politician. Contrary to what many know-nothing British observers seem to think, the message coming out of Tampa was not Tea Party extremism. It was just a reassertion of the basic values of American political culture: self-determination, individual aspiration and genuine community, as opposed to belief in the state as the fount of all social virtue. Romney caught this rather nicely in his acceptance speech, with the comment that the US was built on the idea of “a system that is dedicated to creating tomorrow’s prosperity rather than trying to redistribute today’s.” Or as Marco Rubio put it in his speech, Obama is “trying ideas that people came to America to get away from”.

I voted no because the Dems are too in thrall to their leftist base to learn the lesson even if BO loses in a landslide (I think he will lose but more likely in a close race). This was apparent to me in 2004 even before BO emerged as a national figure and is the reason I left the party after a lifetime of voting D.

The MSM is losing credibility with the general public but that will only make them double down more as "voice of the left" to shore up their own "base". That will keep the echo chamber going and keep the Dems from making the needed changes.

Depends on whether or not the Democrats restrain their marching morons. if they do, they can come back. If they don't, they'll have a hard time distancing themselves from any repeat of the lunacy they teed up in during the Bush presidency. Different times and a different president. That sort of thing won't go unchallenged this time around.

It would actually help everyone if the Democrats lost and moved more to the center.

We are much too polarized politically as it is. There used to be some middle ground that well meaning people could agree on. Things used to be able to be accomplished. Instead now, there is no getting together. Name calling and vicious attacking. There is no acknowledgement that each other side might....just might...have some redeeming qualities.

There will always be those extremists on both sides. However, those groups were small. Today we are a country of polar opposites.

I think David has it right. Some very serious chickens are going to come home to roost in the next four years and whoever is in the White House will be blamed regardless of who is actually responsible.The bad news for the Donks is that the Old Media is committing mass suicide in their frantic attempts to help re-elect Barky and won't have jack for credibility left when the dust settles

It will help some, but the problem with either parties isn't so much the other party. Both have internal problems that make governing tough.

The goals of the grass roots conservatives are opposed to the corporate/business conservatives, and the goals of the grass roots liberal are opposed to the progressive liberals.

Whichever party wins, the opposing factions in that party end up in opposition. Doesnt matter if democrats or republicans come to power, the factions within the winning party cannot hold together once the opposition party is defeated. The objectives of either partys factions are entirely in opposite directions.

These opposing factiond are usually somewhat balanced, but it seems the Dems are going more and more progressive while the Repubs are going more for tea party candidates. With enough unbalance in either party, congress might have a better chance of getting something done: albeit for good or bad.

Until we acknowledge this, we wont understand why each time we vote to rearrange congress, and the office of president: we often end worse for our efforts. As long as we are blind faithful party followers, we will also be blind to the opposing factions, and the harm it does to any party.

I think, frankly, that Reid and Pelosi are much worse for the party than Obama.

If the GOP argument is accepted...that this is 1980 and Obama = Carter, it's hard to imagine that a loss helps the Democratic Party. Romney is certainly no Reagan, but the GOP did control the White House for the next 12 years. And while the Dems kept control in Congress, Pelosi is no Tip.

The Democratic Party won't change. They are waaayyyy too invested in their ideology at this point. Look at Europe. They're doubling down on government-redistribution of wealth, this time from nation to nation.

Losing the presidency and the Senate won't be a significant enough catalyst for the Democrats to fundamentally change. I don't think anything is going to fundamentally change without a big-ass world event that makes everyone step back, say 'holy shit', and stop playing games.

“President Obama has consistently been absent, more concerned about branding than leadership, with image and atmospherics than truly rallying the troops and harnessing our resources and solving our most pressing problems. He turned over the task of crafting solutions on the stimulus bill and the health care bill to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who predictably butchered it. He botched the budget compromise with John Boehner and withdrew from the process. When he thought that partisan gridlock in Congress might make him look bad, rather than forging into the gridlock and navigating a way forward he withdrew to the White House and played over 100 rounds of golf. The problem for President Obama is that the soaring oratory will not work this time. The contrast between the rhetoric and his actual achievements is too great.”

A Dem loss will accelerate the party's purge of the hideous, obnoxious baby boomers currently in their leadership ranks. They, on average, have ugly, unappealing personalities and include Pelosi, Reid, Shumer, Shankowsky, Barney Fwank, and many others.

A Dem loss may lead also to a purge in the MSM of the far left baby boomers like Mathews, Frideman, ODonnell, Andrea Micthell, Modo, etc.

Well, one thing's for sure. The possibility of a Democratic loss of the White House in 2012 has fired up the purge fantasies from the resentful loser wing of the conservative movement. Just look at the comments of AJ Lynch, Smitty1e and Paul A'Barge above. Hate to break it to you guys, but liberalism and the Democratic Party will survive an Obama loss in 2012, though I wouldn't bet on such a loss anyway. But guys like you will still be standing with your noses pressed up against the window, stewing as you watch the people you loathe laughing and having a good time inside the restaurant, regardless of the election results.

Too bad because he's talking about Liberalism, which hasn't been around since McGovern ran in '72. What supplanted Liberalism was what William Ayers gave name to - Leftism, radicalism, and small c communism and it's taking a bad beating.

Barry Ozero is only its most obvious exponent. The people who gave us Stimulus and ObamaTax are just as much the face of it and, until they go down, the Demos face a very rocky future.

Radicalism has been tried for 40 years and it's flopped. That some phony folksy thinks he can dress it up so it can be sold again is pure illusion on his part.

The Democrats and the Left in general are going to have to go through a very agonizing reappraisal because all their signature issues are being co-opted by the Republicans. They are being outflanked because of their own excesses and that is the lesson of the past 4 years.

somefeller said...

Well, one thing's for sure. The possibility of a Democratic loss of the White House in 2012 has fired up the purge fantasies from the resentful loser wing of the conservative movement

Projection like this, Bell&Howell has never achieved. If anybody has talked about purges the last decade, it's the Left.

Remember all those wet dreams about Dubya's assassination?

I wouldn't bet on such a loss anyway. But guys like you will still be standing with your noses pressed up against the window, stewing as you watch the people you loathe laughing and having a good time inside the restaurant, regardless of the election results.

I would. Things are looking very bad for Zero, just if you look at his actions, forget the polls.

And it's the Conservatives who are happy. It's the Lefties who marinate in their own bile.

The only bright light on the horizon for the Democrats should Obama lose would be Andrew Cuomo, a hard leftist who appears non-threatening despite his central role, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in forcing banks to make sub-prime loans, the single biggest factor in the implosion of the economy in 2008 and our present non-recovery from that implosion. He remains totally committed to that kind of disastrous social engineering and yet is seen as a moderate governor by New Yorkers. A moderate who won't take on the teachers' unions, the environmentalists whose anti-fracking success has consigned upstate to permanent depressed status, or the endemic corruption in Albany. So that's what the Dems will offer in 2016, a hard lefty who somehow, by an act of prestidigitation, does nice.

"The problem for President Obama is that the soaring oratory will not work this time. The contrast between the rhetoric and his actual achievements is too great.”

-T Darlymple

And the problem for Obama, and Obama voters, is that they never understood that Obama was never qualified for office. His utter lack of experience, as compared to any other nominee for the office from a major political party is shocking, on even just a cursory examination.

That he thought himself qualified for office indicates extreme hubris (far worse than the hubris for which liberals gleefully accused Bush) and narcissism (for which Bush was never, or infrequently, accused). To some degree, that is forgivable, in the sense that our weaknesses that compel ill-actions are forgivable.

What isn't forgivable is the mass idiocy on parade displayed by the 53% who actually voted for this doomed to fail, affirmative-action candidate. His lack of qualification for office was nakedly transparent; his political values grindingly out-of-sync with a center-right electorate; that 53% of the electorate duped themselves into buying the grifter's argument is to their shame and discredit, not Obama's.

In short, Obama doesn't know what he's doing; his values take him to places not suitable to America; and the sooner America, and the Democrat Party, is done of him, the better for all.

No, because the point of the Democratic party is not only to win elections but to do something with the power they won.

Obama, as far as I can tell, is pushing the Democratic agenda as far as he possibly can while still having a chance at reelection. That's the entire point, it seems to me, so of course it's better if Obama wins.

Unless and until the party abandons him, it's stupid and meaningless to pretend that there's any distinction between him and the party. He is its intellectual leader, he is its most powerful leader, he is its symbol, and every other Democratic leader defers to him in every important matter, even the Clintons.

I'm not saying this is true of all presidents or all party nominees. I don't think it's true of Mitt Romney, for example. But it is true of Obama, and if anyone tries to stray from the Cult of Obama, a/k/a the current Democratic Party, will discipline him or her.

So this is like asking "Will it help Obama if Obama loses." It's a ridiculous question.

Because the economy will likely improve before Romney does anything and Romney would take false credit for it.

The Republicans lost in '92, and Clinton promptly took credit for the recovery (despite it starting slightly before his inauguration).

But it worked out well in the end; the Republicans came surging back in '94, taking control of Congress for the first time in more than a generation. A lot of the old guard Republicans (and Democrats) found themselves out on their asses. So even if Romney "takes credit", don't lose hope.

This is all a moot point, of course, since there's no rational reason to think we're recovering. Most non-partisan economists are expecting a double-dip recession.

Count on the Left to double and triple down on the lies they tell. Not that the right, in its current form, is much better. Count on the left to continue to be on the UnAmerican and ungodly side of everything.

Being a contrarian of sorts here, if the goal of politics is to win elections, I do think that the Dems need to lose big another time or two before they can come back to reality.

They managed to retake Congress six years ago through a couple of somewhat related factors. One was that the Republicans had lost their way, allowing pay-for-play politicians like DeLay to rise to the top. We are seeing some of this already with the new House leadership (I am thinking, in particular, about Lamar Smith, House Judiciary Chair). Secondly, the MSM pushed the anti-Bush meme so hard for so long, that a lot of people turned away from the Republicans. Thirdly, the Dems recruited a lot of moderate candidates in swing districts and states. A lot of them are now gone, leaving the party with mostly hard core leftists as their national politicians.

The, not very surprising, result of this was that they implemented policies that pretty much guaranteed that the recession would be deeper and much longer than any in most of our memories, and implemented policies, such as ObamaCare, that are horribly bad for this country.

I think that the Tea Party is the face of the new Republican party. The Dems need their own such movement, to redefine what they are really for (above and beyond power for its own sake, which is where they are now). But, since they have been in power for the last 4 (President) to 6 (Senate) years, it has been impossible to get such a grass roots movement going. They thought that "Occupy" would be the ticket, but it turned out to be a farce.

Think of it as alcohol or drug dependency. You have to hit bottom before you can climb out, and the Dems have yet to do so. They have always had enough ultra-rich people able to self-finance Senate and gubernatorial races in red states that they could stay close, even when the Republicans were in power.

And, why should they have to change? I would suggest because they are stuck in a 1930s big city machine paradigm of power groups sitting around the table splitting up the loot. And, their public persona has headed in a wacky direction that seems to turn off more and more people every day - as evidenced by Republicans taking over the advantage in party affiliation.

.If you believe in government of the bribed, by the bribed and for the bribed, then just come right out and say so.

The fact that it has become the norm in the American political system, particularly on the right, is to America's shame.

Hopefully, I can refine this a bit. This is something that the Dems of course accept as inevitable in politics, and, indeed, is the reason for politics for a lot of them. Has been at least since FDR built the modern Democratic party coalition 80 years ago. They expect their politicians to be corrupt and to siphon some off for themselves - after all, that is one of the purposes of big city politics.

The problem here is that it is not acceptable for Republicans to do so. The Dems don't really care, except to the extent that they can paint the Reps as hypocrites. Rather, the rank and file view big government as their biggest problem, and politicians taking money for favors, etc., as a big part of the problem. And, thus, the Tom DeLays (and now Lamar Smiths) are seen as traitors to the cause.

Bruce Hayden says:And, thus, the Tom DeLays (and now Lamar Smiths) are seen as traitors to the cause.

You may not like Lamar Smith, but he's still a GOP Congressman in good standing and I don't see much evidence of that changing. And Tom DeLay wasn't exactly a pariah in GOP circles until very recently and he still has his defenders and allies. Don't kid yourself about that, and the rest of your argument is basically a "No true Scotsman" fallacy that doesn't comport with politics in the real world.